A lot of companies these days make you complete what is known as psychometric testing as part of an employment application process. These as usually done to make sure you’re a good fit for ‘our fast-paced work environment’ or some other such form of Linkedin doublespeak. What companies are actually doing is making sure you’re not a total lunatic who’s going to murder everyone in the building the first time someone steals your milk from the office fridge.
Here at The Autopian, we do something similar, only failing the test is considered essential. No one with any modicum of automotive sanity or a functioning brain gains paid employment inside The Autopian substation (actually a series of dangerously constructed, mildly radioactive tunnels hidden deep underneath Galpin Island). How else to explain Miss Mercedes’ airfield full of non-functioning Panzers? S. W. Gossin’s front yard full of non-functioning junkyard orphans? Torch’s back yard full of non-functioning oh you get the idea. Even the members of staff without permanent dirt under their fingernails are not immune. LA David is showing worrying signs of recidivism. Matt bought an old BMW with Apollo capsule miles and is keeping his fingers crossed it doesn’t blow up. And last week my old Ferrari failed its annual MOT test immediately rendering it non-roadworthy in the eyes of the UK Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (only not quite, and I was a spectacular idiot, but we’ll get to that).
What is a MOT test? Let me guide you my colonial cousins, through the thicket of British motoring bureaucracy. Every motor vehicle used by the public on the highway in the United Kingdom, with a few exceptions for things like farm equipment and military vehicles, is subject to an annual test of its roadworthiness and level of exhaust emissions – it’s basically analogous to state testing in the US for the states that have them.
It takes about half an hour, and is carried out by certified tester at an approved location with the required equipment (most garages offer an MOT service). A valid MOT certificate confirms the vehicle meets the minimum standards of safe operation and environment standards on the date the certificate was issued. It is part of the triad of things legally required to use a car (or bike, or commercial vehicle) on the road. The others are valid insurance (durrr) and Vehicle Excise Duty (colloquially known as road tax). You must have a valid MOT certificate to use or park your car on the road, so getting caught driving without any one of these things (or of course a driving license) will result in flashing blue lights in your rearview mirror and your collar being felt by His Majesty’s Constabulary.
What Gets Inspected
The MOT test got it’s name from the then Ministry of Transport, which originally introduced it as a voluntary road worthiness inspection in 1960, only originally applying to cars that were over ten years old. It basically just made sure the brakes, lights and steering of a car worked properly. The voluntary period ended in 1961 but because it was catching so many barely functioning death traps, in 1967 the age of cars being tested was lowered from ten years old to three. Over the years, the number of items the test covers has expanded considerably, but essentially it covers anything that has an impact on the safe operation of the vehicle, and its exhaust emissions. Listed below is what the MOT tester looks at, courtesy of our friends at F1 Autocentres:
Under the DVSA (formerly VOSA) requirements, a MOT will test all these important items on your car to check that they meet the legal requirements:
- Exhaust and emissions – the exhaust should be secure without any serious leaks and vehicle emissions should meet the necessary requirements, which are dependent on the age and fuel type of the vehicle.
- Seat belts – all compulsory seat belts must be in place and are checked for security, operation and condition.
- Steering – the steering wheel should be in an acceptable condition and securely attached to the steering shaft
- Windscreen – this will be checked for all aspects affecting the driver’s view of the road; its condition, the wipers and the washers.
- Bonnet catch – this will be tested to ensure that it securely latches in the closed position.
- Horn – the horn should be operational and of a suitable volume to be heard by pedestrians and other vehicles.
- Number plate – the registration plate should be present and secure, not faded, dirty or obscured. All letters must conform to the approved font design with the correct spacing between them.
- Lights – all required lights are checked to ensure that they are operational, in a good condition and secure.
- Brakes – their condition, efficiency, operation and performance will be tested to ensure that they meet the legal requirements.
- Tyres and wheels – tyres must be the correct size, condition, type and must have the correct tread depth.
- Mirrors – mirrors will be checked to make sure that they are secure and visible from the driver’s seat and that they are not distorted or damaged so as to impair the driver’s view to the rear.
- Doors – both front doors must be operational and have the facility to be opened from inside and outside the vehicle.
- Seats – the driver and passenger seats must be secure and all seat backs in a stable upright position.
- Suspension – suspension is checked and must be of a satisfactory operational condition.
- Fuel system – this should have no leaks and the fuel filler cap must fasten securely.
- Body and structure – the car body must be free from damage and excess corrosions.
Pictured below is a copy of the actual checklist the MOT tester uses:
As you can see, some of these are pretty straightforward ‘is it working yes or no’ and some appear to be more open to interpretation. However the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency lays out very clearly how each item is assessed and what constitutes a pass or a fail, so in actual fact it’s quite black and white. Defects are classed as minor, major or dangerous. Major and dangerous defects result in an instant fail and mean your vehicle cannot be driven on the road until it is repaired, even if its previous MOT certificate is still valid. You would have to get it repaired at that test center, or get it recovered somewhere else. Driving a vehicle on the road without a valid MOT could potentially get you fined up to £1000, but if your car fails with a dangerous defect and you get caught driving it, that increases to £2500 and three penalty points on your license. Here’s a helpful explainer from the UK’s equivalent to Autozone, Halfords.
All My Christmases Came Early
Now the dodgier among you will no doubt be thinking there must be ways around this pinko-commie-Euro government interference in my constitutional right to drive a sketchy vehicle held together with pigeon shit welding and brake response measured in minutes. The UK doesn’t have a constitution like the US does, but in days gone past, well yeah, that was kind of possible.
My bastard of a step-father certainly bluffed some of our family crates through an MOT with rockers full of old newspaper and filler, liberally covered up with underseal. No dodgy under-the-arches mechanic in the seventies and eighties worth his salt stayed in business without knowing a ‘friendly’ local tester who could sort out an iffy MOT on a handshake and a drink. The MOT certificate came off a pad, was filled in by hand and the only authentication was the garage stamp at the bottom. Back in the mid-nineties when my mates and I finally made friends with someone who could sort out a ‘ticket’ for our daily driver shitbox Fords it was like all our Christmases had come at once.
I can’t remember exactly what my Capri 2.8 injection failed on, but our guy told me to ‘get that sorted’ with a wink as he handed me the sacred document that meant I was legal again. These types of shenanigans ended in 2005 when a computerized MOT database system was introduced, making the whole thing a lot more secure and accountable. The old-style certificates are no longer issued, and the results are instantly updated, so the police can tell straight away if a vehicle is being driven illegally. The good thing about this is a vehicle’s MOT records are online for everyone to see, so if you’re thinking about buying a car in the UK you can check out its MOT history if you have the registration number.
Which was how I ended up with a major spanner in the works last week. My friend Lewis runs Takona, a small brand centered around raising mental health awareness through cars. They have regular Coffee and Cars meetups up and down the country, and the first of these was happening last Sunday morning. I thought this would be a perfect first 2024 outing for the Ferrari, so booked the MOT test for lunchtime on the Thursday before. I knew the MOT was rapidly approaching the top of my to-do list – but I didn’t foresee any problems because it passed last year without any issues. The trouble is an old Ferrari behaves a lot like me – moody and uncooperative when it’s cold and grey outside.
But it fired straight up after about four weeks hibernation, nothing new was leaking out underneath and the appropriate lights came on with the appropriate switches. Great. I drove the few minutes to the local garage (who had tested it for me last year) and after explaining to the tester about the dog-leg first gear and fly-off hand brake lest he end up backing through the roller shutter door, sat down to wait.
And it failed. In a rare display of recalcitrant Italian electronic misbehavior, the horn refused to work. Shocking I know. Major defect. Instant fail. Asshats.
I wanted to use the car Sunday. That meant I had exactly a day and a half to get it sorted and re-tested so I would be legal to drive (or so I thought…). Panic ensued. Could I channel my inner David and pull of this herculean repair in time? How complicated could it be? I knew it couldn’t be something as simple as the fuse – a quick glance at the wiring diagram told me other things ran off the same fuse that I knew were working – namely the cigarette lighter and the stereo. Maybe the relay? Possibly I could pull the old switcheroo and take one out of something not required for the test. Several minutes of messing about in the gathering gloom outside confirmed it wasn’t the relay either. Next point of investigation, the horn button.
Giving My Neighbors The Horn
After removing the prancing horse in the middle of the Momo with the aid of a couple of trim tools, I was able to earth out the spade connector to the metal steering wheel boss. No honk. This was starting to look more complicated and expensive by the minute. The steering wheel was going to have to come off, so I could look at the switch behind it. My suspicions that this was where the root of the problem lay arose partly because the indicators had stopped self-cancelling. Not a MOT failure, but enough to convince me something was amiss back there. But the steering wheel was held onto the column with a ring nut, which required a special socket to remove it. Because of course it fucking did. Having learned from my previous wrenching experience I rang Superformance straight away; just in the nick of time to make the post for the next day. At a cost of eighty three quid. Ouch.
Suitably tooled up Friday morning I struggled to get the socket onto the nut, and inadvertently earthed the spade connector against the inner boss of the steering wheel again. HOOOOONNNNK! You have got to be kidding me. Either HMS Queen Elizabeth was coming up my street or that was the dulcet mating call of a 1983 Ferrari Mondial QV. I took the socket off, and touched the connector to the inner boss again. HOOOOONNNNNNK!
This was both good and bad. Good, because it meant the fault wasn’t the horn compressor, a fault at the fuse box or something else that was no longer available and therefore expensive. Bad because what the hell? I reconnected the horn switch, pressed it back into the middle of the steering wheel. and pushed the button. Deafening silence. Bollocks. I pried the button off again, removed the connecter and earthed it. Nothing. Double bollocks. The steering wheel was definitely going to have to come off.
After removing the ring nut the steering wheel was not budging. I needed a hub puller, which naturally I didn’t have. An hour later and twenty five pounds lighter, I had the steering wheel in my hands. Behind the wheel sat a round plastic donut on the steering column. This had a rotary contact for the live feed to the horn wiring, and two plastic tabs that clicked the indicator stalk as they rotated passed it, cancelling the indicators. It wasn’t sitting flat for some reason, so I pulled it off, cleaned up all the electrical contacts with cleaner, and gently pressed the brush contact backwards so the rotary contact piece would sit flat. After gingerly placing the steering wheel back on the column, I again earthed out the space contact to the horn switch. HOOOOONNNNNK. Connect the horn button to make sure before bolting it all back up. HOOOOOOONNNNNNK.
In Your Face, David
Perfect. Ring nut securing the steering wheel back in place, column trim screwed back on, horn button affixed back in the middle of the steering wheel. Let me just make sure. HOOOOOONNNNK. It’s bad enough for the neighbors when I start the bloody thing. Best not to make it worse with incessant honking. Toasting my success with a well-earned cup of coffee, I arranged to have the re-test done Friday afternoon, meaning I would be nice and legal for Sunday morning.
Yep, all that rushing around, paying extra to get a specialist tool delivered overnight, running out to buy another tool, sweet-talking the nice MOT man into squeezing me in at the last moment on Friday afternoon when no doubt he was looking forward to getting down the pub, had all paid off. I had snatched victory from the jaws of defeat. In your FACE David Tracy! Gaze upon my works and tremble! Coffee and Cars attended, Ferrari admired, pictures taken, doubles all ’round…
Except.
Then at the beginning of this week it dawned on me I had been a colossal, monumental, heroically massive, total dipshit. On the Jason scale of dipshittery, well just call me Adrian Torchinsky. Dipshit Town had a new mayor. Me. Why? Because since 2018, cars over forty years old no longer require a valid MOT. It’s not something you have to apply for like Vehicle Excise Duty exemption. You just simply don’t need to get your car tested once it has had it’s fortieth birthday.
The Mondial turned forty last March. All that panic, stress and expense was unnecessary.
- Why Car People (And Everyone) Should Skip The Ferrari Film Entirely
- You’re Never Going To Believe What Happened To Adrian’s Ferrari Unless You Know Absolutely Anything About Old Ferraris: Tales From The Slack
- Do You Want To See The Bill To Fix Adrian’s Ferrari? Of Course You Do: Tales From The Slack
- My Diesel Manual Chrysler Voyager Passed German Inspection For The Second Time! Then It Immediately Broke Down
Not testing 40 year old cars makes me nervous – I know too many classic car nuts who are good at polishing but have no idea for how to fix anything or what constitutes “dodgy”. I was on a classic car run to Disneyland Paris once on the autoroute to Arras, with some lovely 30’s to 50’s classics, thinking I am the only car here with disc brakes and nothing structural until the front bulkhead, heading back to front, (my car is a ’72 Morgan 4/4 1600). If their brakes fail, my wife and I will be wiped out by a late ’20s Bentley and a similar aged Bugatti!
I’ll still be getting it tested yearly, I just needlessly panicked because I was going to use the car the following weekend in this instance. I could have still taken it out and the MOT could have waited a week or two.
If your car has a valid MOT test then it CAN be driven away with a Major defect as long as it is still roadworthy (https://www.gov.uk/check-vehicle-safe) – it’s only a dangerous fail that renders the vehicle immovable from the garage until fixed.
I also believe that if a car over 40 years old is taken for an MOT test and fails then the fail remains live and the police can still pull you over for it.
As another aside for the sake of oversharing, the 40 year exemption is only valid on cars that have not been substantially modified in the past 30 years.
Couldn’t help laughing! 😀
Despite the non-requirement for the MOT I think it’s still a good idea to get one occasionally to make sure that the car is safe.
I certainly intend to get MOTs for my JAPton Special* when/if I get it running again.
(It’s a JAP speedway engine from the 50s mounted in a Norton Featherbed frame built up by my Father. The engine was designed for running on Methanol fuel for 4 lap races…. he somehow managed to get it running as a road-bike using Petrol for hundreds of miles at a time. But’s not been used for a few years and for the life of me I can’t get it running properly since Dad passed away. Of course he never jotted down any notes about it …..)
Oh yeah – is it me or do all old MOT certs look like they’ve been written in the same handwriting? (obviously even when they’ve come from totally different garages).
Mr. Adrian Clarke,
I love Porsches. I have a couple. I was once offered a 914 for free. I did not take it. I think the 914 is the ugliest Porsche if not any other car ever designed. I do understand that they handle amazing if not better than most on the track. With that said, can you redesign the 914 to be modern if not futuristic and amazing? I know this is not the forum to ask but Im not on Instagram or twitter. Please excuse me for asking if inappropriate. Sincerely,
Porsche Forever.
Have you seen the 914 Restomod by FifteenEleven?
https://www.hagerty.co.uk/articles/news-articles/this-porsche-914-restomod-comes-with-a-caymans-bite/
i don’t do the redesigns anymore because of the time they took to do, but if I ever do them again I’ll do it for you.
One thing I’ve been wondering about, and wouldn’t mind one of the fine writers to dig into:
With all the noise cancelling claptrap being bolted to vehicles, how do they ensure that horns are still being heard? Are today’s horns louder than the horns of yesteryear?
The noise cancellation only works for sounds inside the vehicle I think. Otherwise it;s be bloody dangerous if you couldn’t hear anything outside.
HONK HONK HOOOOOONK
HOOOOONNNNK!
But you now have a certified operational horn and what I assume are mildly annoyed neighbors. I have achieved far less for much more money. Good work!
That was quite the ride, but even though you didn’t need the MOT at least it led you to fix the steering column, and left you reasonably assured your Ferrari is in decent shape. I live in a US state where we are required to have annual inspections, but we don’t get any grace period for new vehicles. I always thought the inspections should start after 3 years.
A quick survey of all the rusted out shit-heads on the road in my home state of Illinois, is all you need to confirm that having no inspections whatsoever is probably not a good thing. However, the notion that having no horn is an instant fail, and you can’t drive on the road at all until it’s corrected, no grace period. I think that is utterly insane.
I’m dreading Texas dropping its inspection for that very reason. It’s not the people pushing the boundaries I worry so much about as much as I do so-and-so who doesn’t know or willfully ignores the two-ton pile-o-bolts that’s now a rolling hazard to themselves or others on the road.
I know people gamed the system all the time, but oblivious Prius Karens usually weren’t the ones to do so.
So long as the driver’s got at least one functioning middle finger, it’s perfectly safe to let them out on the road without a horn.
it woulda been nice of the initial MOT guy/place to TELL YOU the 40-year bit and save you the hassle/quids, but then we wouldn’t have gotten the content that we’re here for!
Mate, you just revealed your address by posting that invoice.
I would redact it out probably.
I find hate mail comforting.
(Thanks. Good catch).
I live in Indiana… land of the everlasting rustbucket shitbox… There are no annual inspections of any kind whatsoever for vehicles in this state, save for a few counties that are mandated to get a long spicy rod that penetrates deep into the exhaust. If you follow the tube from the sensor rod back into the machine into which it is connected, you’ll find a garden gnome hookah lounge. Their vice? Those sweet, sweet NOX fumes. And everclear (or E85 in a pinch). They are drunken little bastards too.
Ayy as a fellow hoosier myself, sweet tap dancing god we have some wickedly crusty, musty, leaky, and smokey mules of dire straights that have been cobbled together in a fashion thatd make dr frankenstein jealous.
And no sniffer only makes the square dancing death traps complete
Indiana…. the only state in the nation where even gas cars can roll coal somehow.
LOL
Ah, Indiana is also full of those V6 Hondas that let out massive clouds of smoke on acceleration.
Theyre just marking territory is all, cant lets the cummins kids have all the fun
Well, eco boost fords will do that when you stomp on em, theyll dump a bit, but some people have their hoopties running waaay too rich
So if a car is too old to require an MOT and you fail an MOT, are you still bound to fix the failure before you can start just skipping them?
Yes.
At least I would imagine so, because the MOT test fail is recorded on the national database, and will show up on the results to the police when/if they run the number (say if they stop you for speeding). Driving a car that has failed an MOT fail is an offense
So if you drive to the testing location and then fail, does that mean you have to trailer the thing home to work on it or risk getting stopped by the po-po sitting around the corner waiting for miscreants to drive away from the testing station?
You are allowed to drive between the testing centre and home only, if you get caught making a large detour the police can easily check your address and where you had just been.
Edit: Here’s some more info – https://www.theaa.com/mot/advice/driving-without-an-mot
My ZX7R gets an MOT advisory every year for “horn functional but quiet”. It works fine, but I guess keeps his quota up for advisories so he can not bother checking the bike properly.
I’ve never failed an MOT on a bike because it’s easy to check it all at home and they are dangerous enough without being broken.
I’ve failed many MOTs with cars though, with everything from “headlight beam pattern indistinct” to “structural rust”.
The system is a lot better since it’s become electronic, but you still have to shop around to avoid the places that fail cars just so they get paid to fix them. Brakes seem to be the sweet spot of hard for the customer to disprove but profitable and easy to “fix”. I find leaving my engineer business card on my keys tends to filter out the bullshit.
I had an old motorcycle “inspected” many moons ago, and had it brought in strapped to the back of my (then) truck. The straps were never even so much as loosened, let alone the bike moved (I handed them the keys to both the truck and bike).
I’m not even convinced they even turned the key on the bike before giving me a green light.
The test for bikes is also covering many fewer items than the car test. (god that sentence reads in a horrible manner)
Half as many tyres for a start, and no emissions test.
My brother’s father-in-law was an MOT tester in the Cotswolds, which is an area with a lot of rich people with expensive cars (Clarkson lives not far away). Because of this, and being the only garage that did MOTs in the area, he tested a lot of interesting supercars.
Apparently if you’re doing an MOT test on (eg) a Ferarri F40, part of the test involves a quick hoon around the local roads. You know, just to be sure everything is working 😉
Cars with LSDs are supposed to be road tested for brake performance as the test rollers can damage them.
Great job fixing that horn! It reminds me of me replacing the OEM steering wheel of my Carina with a higher spec OEM wheel. I only needed a 17mm socket with extension and naturally I made contact between the earth and the horn contacts. HOOOOOONK!
And then I didn’t tighten the nu properly, so after driving around for two or three weeks all of a sudden I hear HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOK! while driving. The nut undid itself and made contact. That was very embarrassing!
Anyway, here in the Netherlands we have APK, which is very similar to MOT. For us the exemption only starts at 50 years. Even though exemption means you don’t have to officially pass the test, the car needs to be roadworthy. That means it should pass the test if the police would challenge it. That’s why I continue to get my 42 year old Carina tested after it becomes 50 years old. Last year it failed the test two times because the state it was in was dreadful. I managed to get it pass MOT the third time, but I still don’t trust my brakes a 100%. That’s something I need to get sorted this year.
Aye, it’s the same here for MOT exempt vehicles. I know ppl who have learned that the hard way being cocky to a traffic cop…
Obligatory Brian Regan: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7HqljsJBkq4
Good job! 🙂
That MOT logo is just SO seventies!
But it might just as well be for National Nuclear Commission (I just made up..) or something similar scary government’y shit.
It’s like the biohazard sign, but scarier.
Like an upside down Massey Ferguson.
Lived in the UK for nine years and always thought it was weird that the safety inspection was still called MOT, when the actual Ministry of Transport was renamed eons ago. In NZ, it’s called a Warrant of Fitness (WOF) for private cars and the name not only makes sense, but it’s a much better description than MOT.
Cars in Blighty aren’t expected to be on the road for 40 years and not expected to be daily drivers if they are, which is why they’re exempt.
It’s probably smarter to get tested every year, coz if you have an accident and your car isn’t deemed roadworthy at the time, expect to face legal consequences.
If we use the same name for something for more than fifty years, then it officially becomes tradition and can never be altered, on pain of snotty letters to the papers.
I’m amazed Charles hasn’t had to change his gender just so we don’t have to replace Queen with King.
In green ink, no less!
So you don’t need an inspection, but if you do get one and fail it, you’re screwed? That’s interesting.
Even without the test you’re not allowed to use an “unroadworthy vehicle”, and you need a horn to warn people of things they can’t/didn’t see.
This reminds me of the song “Doobie in my Pocket” by Keller Williams.
$40 for a somewhat thorough inspection of a forty year old car.
Sounds like a good deal to me.
I see a lot of collector plates in my state. Mostly on questionable vehicles I have to share the highway with.
Collector of what exactly? Rust? Bad decisions? Empty beer cans in the trunk? Unpaid tolls and bald tires?
I’d actually appreciate it if the registration process was a little more strict here.
In Wisconsin you can get a collector plate at 20 or 25 years, don’t remember which. This spares you the emissions test, but you’re not supposed to drive your “collector car” in the winter, which is most of the year.
I wonder what costs more, the theoretical small amount of accidents caused by catchable vehicle malfunctions or the time, money and regulatory overhead of inspections.
Either way congratulations on fixing your horn and not needing an inspection next year.
>Defects are classed as minor, major or dangerous. Major and dangerous defects result in an instant fail and mean your vehicle cannot be driven on the road until it is repaired, even if its previous MOT certificate is still valid
I think this isn’t quite right- a major defect means an MOT failure, but if you still have a valid MOT you can drive until that runs out. A dangerous defect means the car is unsafe and therefore illegal to drive.
There is of course the exception that a car without an MOT can legally be driven to a pre-booked MOT appointment, and if it fails can be driven to a place of repair (which can be your home) and back to be re-tested. There are a lot of stories going round about how once it fails it has to be trailered with all four wheels off the road- these aren’t true.
So is a Tyre the same thing as a Tire here? Ha ha ha
Seriously, you would think they would have told you that you didn’t have to do the inspection when you went there
Glad it all worked out though!